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Pretty sure Rogers keeps disconnecting my internet in the middle of the night without notice to do some kind of maintenance hoping that nobody will notice.

I keep having to reboot the modem every morning for the past few days. This time I was awake when it went down.



There's a storm raging outside. I wonder if we're going to lose power again.


Katy and I have randomly discovered sumo wrestling and weirdly gotten into it. The first thing I learned was that the people who deliberately get seating in the front rows are... brave.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

It's all these dignitaries and rich people, those rows aren't easy to buy, and they get run over a lot. As do the judges, "Shimpan bowling" we call it.

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At 14 when I started learning to program I would have probably given up if someone said "oh you should be using this thing that is $200/mo"

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in reply to dreid

I can't draw analogies like this. When I learned to program, it was by reading hundreds of printed man pages for TI-BASIC and MS-DOS. I have little hope that a 5yr old from today would do the same. I think if I didn't know how to program and had to learn that way today, I might not.

The old ways are not the new ways, and they aren't even that sacred. They are just barely the known.

in reply to Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.

@BoydStephenSmithJr I think back in the day, you still had a chance to stumble upon someplace decent to start. You could be browsing the library and come across something like "Beginning C64 BASIC programming" or "How to tell the computer what to do" and they had a good chance of being half-way decent starting points.

You also need intellectual curiosity. That spark that goes "can I make the machine do this?" or "what happens if I do that instead?". That in turn requires feeling *safe*.

@dreid

in reply to mkj

@mkj I think if you have the intellectual curiosity you can still get started from most computers by using the JS console.

But, I haven't checked to see how locked down many iOS devices are now.

The TI PC was hard to get started, but once booted it wasn't locked down at all.

@mkj
in reply to mkj

@mkj I think there are still beginner guides out there, some free in general, some free via library. But, I find it hard to judge their suitability because of the "curse of knowledge". Unless my brain is compromised, I will never again not know how to double-click, e.g.
@mkj


Went to a large grocery store and waitied in the parking lot with a book for a few hours hoping to pick up an Instacart order. Didn't get one, but as I tried to start the car to go home, I found that I'd left the lights on and the battery's dead.

Waiting on my father to show up with jumper cables, but at least I'm not so upset about not getting an order. Would've sucked to find the battery dead when I tried to deliver it...


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"It does not appear that he (Edgar Allan Poe) ever wrote or spoke of it, nor is there any evidence that he even noticed it. And yet that house, to the two persons in possession of certain information, equals or outranks in horror the wildest phantasy of the genius who so often passed it unknowingly, and stands starkly leering as a symbol of all that is unutterably hideous."

— H.P. Lovecraft: Necronomicon, p. 233

This is just Lovecraft's not-so-subtle way of saying "I'm a better horror writer than Edar Allan Poe".

What a pompous ass.

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mutual aid signal boost for a friend

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Why I stopped ordering food delivery:

Modest Meal..... $14.99
Drink.... $3.43

"I will enjoy the Modest Meal and a drink." 😇

Bill:

Modest Meal $14.99
Drink. $3.43
Tax $2.80
Service Fee $5.35
Fee ... $2.80
Area Charge ... $6.90
Delivery ... $4.80
Just Go With It Fee $3.04
Movement Charge? ...$2.94
Delivery Fee... $2.80
Snakes ..$2.34
Vendor Notion $2.80
Just Because Fee $4.81
Ghost Removal $6.03
Vibes ... $1.03
Fee Tax $6.30

Total: 65.56
Tax Again For Some Reason: 11.62

True Total: 77.19 😲

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in reply to myrmepropagandist

I kind of stole this joke from someone who posted it as an image without a description, but I changed it up.

I *would* have just boosted that post, but the image wasn't described and as I started to write alt text I thought of some changes to make... so the moral is if you wanna get boosted include the alt text!

in reply to myrmepropagandist

yeah by the time i finish preparing the alt text it becomes infinitely easier to just post that instead

saves everyone's bandwidth too


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LLMs are not intelligent but they ARE good for spouting extruded text that mimics the zeitgeist of their training data and if that training data includes the overflowing sewer that is the unfiltered internet you're going to get gaslighting, lies, conspiracy theories, and malice. Guardrails only prevent some of it from spilling over.

Humans base their norms on their peers' opinions, so LLMs potentially normalize all sorts of horrors in discourse—probably including ones we haven't glimpsed yet.

in reply to Charlie Stross

@Charlie Stross A million times this.

Are there very narrow areas where AI can be useful? Probably, but easily 99.9% of the stuff it's being shoehorned into, AI ought never to be trusted with.


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I think it’s dope af that plants take air and turn it into solid material

why aren’t more people awestruck that this shit happens all the time?

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So there's this Japanese sushi chef YouTuber that Katy and I have been watching. He does all kinds of recipes, but he keeps using this one ingredient I'm unfamiliar with. He calls it "salad oil". Is that a mistranslation of vegetable oil, or is this something else I'm just unaware of?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

It's any unnamed vegetable oil that you would use to make a salad dressing; the key characteristic is that it doesn't have much flavor. It's often sold as a mix of whatever's reasonably cheap: soybean, canola, peanut, and in some cases, cottonseed.

You can substitute whatever you like, especially if you think the recipe would improve with avocado or olive oil.



"Physical books are so much better than ebooks because you don't have to worry about the battery dying", I say as the battery to my reading light starts dying...

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Candles! I appreciate the irony but at least you still have options.

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I'm sure it's a product of its time, but good God there are some racist passages in this book.

(comment on Necronomicon)

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I went to a book store once as a young teen and wound up buying this book because I thought it looked weird and creepy. I'm sure I read some of it, but I don't recall a single thing. All I remember was my Christian mom freaking out when she found out under my bed thinking I was a devil worshipper or something.
in reply to SP⟁CED GO⟁T

@SP⟁CED GO⟁T @Jonathan Lamothe I'm not very far into it yet, and the first few stories have been quite good, but then it took a hard turn. Maybe it's just the one story? I don't really know.


Brought home a box of groceries. On my in the front door, the bottom of the box gave out and everything hit the floor. Amazingly, every single egg survived the fall.

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ec: selfie

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I will concede that ebooks are convenient, but when it comes to a good novel, nothing tops the experience of an actual paper book for me.

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Bank machines have business hours now? How is that a thing?

Are the machines that are replacing us demanding better working conditions now? 🙃

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

in Aachen it's at least partially because people kept blowing them up at night lol

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🐓 I live next door to 18 chickens now. Therefore, be aware that a Chicken Report could happen at any time during Dubious Goals Committee. 🐔

Also simf. Simf can happen at any time during DGC. 🎹 🎵

Dubious Goals Committee airs EVERY single day at 19:30 UTC! 🕢 That's:

3:30 pm Eastern (North America)
2:30 pm Central
12:30 pm Pacific
21:30 St. Pauli (Hamburg) ☠️
16:30 Tierra del Fuego (ARG)

#radio, #anonradio, #sdf, #synth, #tob, #livestream,

Listen here: anonradio.net/

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in reply to tob

🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔

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I need to request that *all* programmers remember that some of us are visually impaired and need to be able to edit the actual tar out of the font sizes for your menus, main bodies of your programs, etc. We need font resizing options, bolding options, color options, and font type options. For everything. If it's text, it needs to be able to be redone by the user. Also, that needs to be on a "global" and then a "per pane" basis, including the main area a person is working in.

Complaint trigger: All these M'Fkn' "Media Players" that are written for dinky little smart phones that no one over the age of 45 or 50 can even read hardly at all. I don't care that most of the people who download these things are around 12 to 25 years old. Some of us need to use these things in order to start or operate businesses and are *real grown ups.* We need these things but when we can't read them, they're useless to us.

Please fix this in every application on this planet. Thanks.

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in reply to JustRosy 🇺🇦

Also that the fonts don't shrink back to their tiny size when you zoom in to try to read them. [Points finger at a large number of map applications.]

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begpost, urgent, homeless in 2 days

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I seem to have allowed myself to run out of CR2032s. Ah well, If I don't test my blood glucose that means it's fine, right?
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Katy: Did you look in the cabinet under your night stand?
Me: Yes. They're absolutely not there.
Katy: Found some.
Me: Where were they?
Katy: In the cabinet under your night stand.
Me: 🙃


venting (profanity)

Our brakes sound really terrible. Our emergency fund is tapped out.

Fuck.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

venting (profanity)

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in reply to Kevin Davy

venting (profanity)

@Kevin Davy I'm pretty sure they're shot. I've been neglecting it for a while (equal parts lack of funds and lack of spoons).

Already working on a contingency plan. If need be, we can lean on family for help. I just hate doing that because I know things are tight for them too.


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This is the hardest message I have ever written.

Does anyone in have a lead on a company that would be willing to sponsor a web development technical lead?

I am open to most Euro, Japan, and Oceania.

My German is bad. My Japanese is a bit better. I would love to get better.

It seems like things are going to be no longer safe for my family.

Help me.

Please boost. 🙇

Edit:

I want to thank everyone who has boosted, replied, and offered advice. Thank you so much. I have much more to go on, and much more to learn.

Everyone. Please stay safe, and keep your family and friends close.

Thank you all.

#fedihired

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ph (nothing to be worried about)
Walking into a fast food restaurant and placing an order is a fun thing to do while wearing a heart monitor.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

ph (nothing to be worried about)

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in reply to Shae Erisson

ph (nothing to be worried about)

@Shae Erisson It's a thing my doctor's been keeping an eye on for a while now. My heart rate will occasionally just spike for no apparent reason. I'm told it's "an electrical issue, not a plumbing issue" which is apparently far less serious.

At present, it's nothing more than a nuisance. I'm wearing the monitor for now to see of they can actually catch it happening to better diagnose, but in general, it doesn't affect my day-to-day.


in reply to Feral Aunt Nessie

Not to rub it in, but Australia learned from America's poor choice of president and went further left, keeping the Labour party in for another term and eating into our equivalent of the Republicans. In the fall out the losing parties even broke up their coalition so they might even never win again (At least not in that form). Unfortunately as collateral damage, Labour also ate into the Greens votes. But overall everyone is pretty happy about it. Murdoch media was fuming of course.
in reply to Feral Aunt Nessie

This week a “life-changing” breakthrough in gene therapy has given people born with genetic hearing loss potential for recovering some of their hearing.

Also Britain’s Ash trees are becoming resistant to Ash die back.

Also Ireland has gone COAL FREE #goodNews


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Reports that a Canadian citizen who has resided in the US since age 10 was abducted at a green card interview. Her husband is begging ICE to let him fly her back to Canada and they refuse to release her.

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> But I *like* programming. I *like* writing. I like making things and then being able to sit back and look at them and think, holy fuck, I made that.

Yes, this, all of this. Too many quotes to pull. Thank you @eevee eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-ris…

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I've encountered an interesting bug in the @Nextcloud 📱☁️💻 client found in the F-Droid store. Whenever I use it to create a folder, the folder name is converted to lower case for some reason. I can fix this after the fact by renaming, but it's annoying (and kind of weird).

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Whenever I mention that boycotting is a privilege, I inevitably get people trying to explain how wrong I am.

How “easy” it is to find alternatives.

How “important” it is not to support big businesses like Amazon.

How “lazy” it is not to shop local.

They talk over me, condescend and accuse me of not fighting for the cause.

Disabled people need your support and solidarity.

We’re all in this fight together.

When we tell you something is inaccessible, believe us.

Most of us already feel guilty we can’t do more, but there’s many things that aren’t “easy” for us.

Survival is resistance. It’s not “lazy” to utilize a service that will keep you alive.

Fight the fascists. Not one another.

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in reply to Broadwaybabyto

I will return to shopping locally as soon as they return to wearing masks, so that I don't have to stand in their unfiltered viruses. But I bet they're too lazy for that.

#CovidIsNotOver

in reply to Broadwaybabyto

that's true. Some people need to rely on purchases delivered to their doors, if going shopping is a barrier for any reason (old age, disability, area they live in, etc.). Unfortunately, Amazon has already killed a lot of small businesses who could make local deliveries. It will take time to reverse the trend.


You probably don't need to be able to read #teeline to tell which item on my to-do list was cleaning (and re-inking) my #FountainPens.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

There's also a lesson in there somewhere about how metadata can leak sensitive information. (note: teeline is not cryptographically secure 🙃)

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I'm going to talk about sexual harassment online for just a little bit here.

Bear with me.

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Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Veronica Explains

@verbrecher that works for you, but like, not everybody?

My literal job involves being a public figure. Responding with "don't be so public" isn't exactly helpful and isn't appreciated.



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#UI #Design Grumps' #Manifesto:

  • Scrollbars should be thick enough to grab easily with an ordinary mouse.
  • Scrollbars should be a part of the window decoration, NOT inside the content of the window.
  • Active titlebars and inactive titlebars should be completely different colors or brightnesses. Obvious at the quickest glance.
  • Client Side Decorations are stupid, I don't care how many people say otherwise, or how many times. They're just awful on so many levels.
  • All text should be of decently high contrast, and any text atop varying elements like videos should be outlined and/or shadowed for maximum visibility. No more stupid plain white text atop bright videos, you absolute station wagons.
  • Any program, whether gui or CLI, should be comfortable and usable in either light or dark mode, depending on the user's preference.

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in reply to Frost, glow wolf 🐺

Here's all our scroll-related settings, if that's helpful.

Also our Firefox is a bit older than what's current. Hopefully that doesn't have an effect.

The scrollbars still aren't the widest, but they could be worse.



Any time I create an account where the password policy forbids a certain class of character I know I might as well just hand my PII over to the data brokers directly.

Edit: autocorrupt

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Wednesday, it's Captain!
(No »AI«-Slop.)

[Edit] I would like to give credit to @Scmbradley for the original idea, published as a text-only-toot.

#noaislop #Kvadraat #wednesday #tintin #haddock

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Today I was reminded that old online chats offered context awareness for the people online: you knew you won't be a bother to a friend who has a smiley flower as a status; and you knew you might not be getting a quick reply from someone who's Away.

Today I don't even know if my friends are online or not. The messenger apps make the assumption that everyone is online, and if not, they will receive a push notification, and will reply to you as soon as possible. But this assumption is barely true. I bet it makes lives harder, especially for ND people

(Edited for a pixel-perfect screenshot)

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in reply to Nina Kalinina

My ICQ nr. was 214402666, still remember it today 😄 I have to admit I experience problems with no status today quite often because I very rarely visit my Facebook profile, don't have Facebook nor Facebook Messenger app on my phone, only sometimes login from my PC to share some important news. And people don't understand why I reply after a week or two if they reach out there.

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